In a world where social capital is king and everyone is scrambling for attention, Pay with a Tweet offers
entrepreneurs, creative minds and established businesses a way to reach out to a media-saturated audience.

The concept behind Pay with a Tweet is simple. A single button is installed on your website, and when a browser clicks on it, they are given the chance to create a Tweet or a Facebook post about your content. As soon as they have done so, they are granted access to a download that you provide.

At the most basic level, Pay with a Tweet offers your browsers and potential clients something concrete and valuable for something that they perceive as very simple. Essentially, all you are asking them to do is something that they would be doing anyway, just slightly modified for your needs. However, much like a single snowball can cause an avalanche, a single Tweet from one person can reach dozens of their friends who in turn continue the pattern.

Programs like Twitter and Facebook hold our social interactions together. They give us a face-to-face immediacy with friends, family and colleagues that we do not see every day, and the personal nature of these interactions lends them authority. As the content creator, you can reach a certain number of people with your own Tweets, but the number that your combined followers can reach by contacting their followers is exponentially greater!

One of the great benefits of Pay with a Tweet is that it relies on completely natural social patterns. You are not asking people to sell your product or to advertise it. Instead, you are only asking them to do something very simple, and you are rewarding them with something that they want.

What are some of the things that you can offer with Pay with a Tweet?

For example, if you are company that retails products, you may offer a coupon that grants the bearer 20% off their next purchase. The value is clear, and most people would be willing to make a Tweet for the concrete reward of a reduced price.

Pay with a Tweet also allows you to offer free samples of your own creative work. If you are advertising for a band, a Tweet could result in the download of a free song or a brief interview video with the band itself. Similarly, authors can use Pay with a Tweet to offer a free story or a sample chapter that is not available elsewhere. If you are an instructor of some kind, the download might consist of a free video lesson or a written tutorial.

How I Use Pay with a Tweet to Promote Clickbank Products

I write a short How to eBook in the same niche as the product and use this as a free giveaway. I create my product promotional affiliate link Tweet on Pay with a Tweet and copy the iFrame code for the button. I then set up a squeeze page on my blog and advertise the free eBook I created. I explain that the visitor can download this eBook if they click the Pay with a Tweet or Pay with a Facebook Post. They click the button, share my Tweet; boom, my Tweet goes viral. All I have to do is drive traffic to my squeeze page.

In a time when the Internet is swamped with things like pay-per-click ads and flashing banners, Pay with a Tweet tells your browsers that they are important to you and that you are not going to push anything on them. Research and plain common sense tells us that people hate to feel like they are being forced into anything; complicated click-through traffic and requests for additional contacts creates feelings of resentment and anger.

On the other hand, Pay with a Tweet offers a clear exchange. You are asking for a very simple, very basic and practically cost-free type of promotion from your browser, and in exchange, you are offering something of value to them. This is one of the most honest win-win exchanges out there when you are looking for advertising.

When you are thinking about how to get Pay with a Tweet working for you, just start by thinking of the reward. The reward can be anything that interests your clients, whether it is a small piece of writing, a single song, a coupon or an exclusive image. Once you have the reward in mind, you are ready to institute the Pay with a Tweet system. The program is easy and intuitive, allowing you to call the shots on your own media advertising campaign.

With more than 10,000 Pay with a Tweet buttons created and more than 400,000 files downloaded, the first social payment program has proven that it can get you the attention and the sales that you have been looking for!

Well I hope this helps and gives you an additional free marketing strategy to include in your arsenal. Please do comment below, I would love to hear your thoughts on the following:

In this post I would like to share with you how to create a 3D book cover for your
eBook. 3D book covers are perfect when you are giving an eBook away as a free gift, advertising your eBooks online and when self publishing your Kindle book on Amazon. I have personally found that converting my Kindle book cover to 3D helps to sell more books. The reason for this is that when your book is displayed with other related books, a 3D cover stands out and therefore grabs the attention of the prospective buyer.

To create a 3D book cover we shall be using Pixlr free online editor http://pixlr.com/editor/ and a 3D blank template of a book cover.

Step 1 – Click Open Image from Computer and import the blank 3D book cover.

Step 2 – Click Open Image as Layer in the Layer drop down and import your normal 2D book cover.

Step 3 – Click Free Distort in the Edit drop down.

Step 4 – Shape your book cover by using the 4 corner adjustment points as highlighted in red.

Step 5 – Click on ‘File’ in the top menu and confirm ‘Apply These Changes’. And finally click ‘Save’ under ‘File’ in the top menu and save your 3D book cover to your PC.

That’s it, 5 steps to create a 3D book cover in minutes for free!

If you found this article useful, could I ask a favour and for you to share this post using either of the social buttons below. In addition, please do comment since I would be interested in your thoughts.

Writers today have many publishing opportunities open to them that were not available some years back. The Kindle has revolutionised the publishing world and allowed independent writers to have a ‘voice’.

Publishing a book is a highly competitive market and many new writers now look to avenues such as the Kindle to get noticed. Here are some benefits of publishing via this route:

Easily accessible

Information is immediately available for the reader, in a voracious market. An increasing number of people own a Kindle or have access to the Kindle app and are able to choose from the variety of books on sale at reasonable prices. In an instant, a potential reader can click to buy a book, costing perhaps 99p and your reach as an author increases each and every time they decide to do this to your work. This is an exciting opportunity that is easily available.

Quick and easy

A quick online search shows just how simple the process of uploading your first book onto The Kindle market is. Once you have got the words, format and a good cover design, uploading the ebook is a relatively painless process and the instructions are accessible and easy to understand. It comes without the agonizing wait, and often rejections and chasing up, which more traditional publishing avenues offer.

Niche author

The Kindle categories mean that you can write for a certain market and become something of an expert in a particular genre and specialise.

Reputation

Whether your book is fiction or non-fiction, you can become an expert in a certain field or simply have the reputation that comes with calling yourself a published author. This can help your creditability and future work.

Share royalties

Kindle advice is to keep your book (the first one, at least) as reasonably priced as possible to attract people. For each sale on Kindle, you receive a generous share of the royalties and this soon adds up. You will start to see a boost to your income a lot quicker than with traditional means of publishing.

Marketing

Amazon helps with the marketing of your ebook and with social media, websites and blogs at your fingertips, it is easier than ever to spread the word about your work and attract new readers. A great automation tool to use for bookmarking is Social Adr. If you have read any of my books, you will notice that I love Social Adr. For the low monthly subscription, you certainly receive a worthwhile return on investment.

Rewarding

Above all else, after a long period of writing a book, there is no better feeling than seeing your work published and available to the general public. The Kindle allows this to happen in a much more straightforward way for new, independent writers than in the past.

Writing an ebook and publishing it on a platform such as The Kindle is only part of the job. To earn a reputation as a respectable author and to earn income from your books, you need to spread the work and ensure that as many people as possible know about it, buy it, read it and come back wanting more. The good news is, it is easier than ever to carry out cost-effective marketing, thanks to the Internet and rise of social media. Here are some tips on how to market your ebook.

Your website

If you have a website, create a page specifically to sell the ebook. If you don’t have a website, it would be wise to set one up. This will act as a sales page for your book.

Their website

Kindle and others help authors market their ebook and some online stores offer space where you can write copy to convince people to buy you ebook. Make use of this with compelling, accurate, unique and snappy wording, that intrigues the reader enough to buy the book, without spoiling the plot. This is also a chance for you to promote any other writing credentials you may have and highlight any positive reviews.

Bloggers

Many bloggers look for items to review on their blog. Reach out to book bloggers or simply to those who blog about the subject of your ebook (fashion, health, fitness etc). You will find that bloggers are encouraging of small, independent authors and if you can target blogs with large followers, their positive recommendation can result in great sales revenue for you.

Email Marketing

If you have a blog or website, aim to build a mailing list. This allows you to tap in to email marketing campaigns. You can send out a blanket emails or newsletters to your subscribers, informing them about your ebook or any deals/discounts/offers. You can also use a blog and email as a way to receive feedback and communicate with readers. Make sure that you interact with your mailing list recipients, for example, if they email you with a question, aim to respond or thank them for their comments.

Forums

If your ebook is about a particular specialist topic, it would be worth researching the various online communities and forums about the subject and promote your ebook through that. The best way to do this is not to spam them with links to your book or website, but to interact and answer posts, give your opinion and a subtle mention about your book. If you use them to merely promote yourself and give nothing back, you risk being banned from certain sites or annoy potential customers.

Social Media

Twitter and Facebook are two of the most popular social networking sites and are powerful ways to market your ebook. They allow you to build a follower base, keep people informed of news and engage and interact with them. Other social media sites include Goodreads and Shelfari which are specific to readers.

Incentives

Everybody loves an offer, discount or freebie. To help boost sales, consider these options with your ebook and use the various communication tools to make sure that everybody finds out!

Research is imperative when writing, publishing and marketing your ebook. Have a look at what has been done before, by similar authors and learn from their successes and mistakes. Above all, enjoy the process. Your ebook has more than probable become a huge part of your life …share it with as many people as possible!

Many YouTube users tend to think of it as a means of exposure and marketing, as opposed to money-making. But there are many new and exciting opportunities to make money on You Tube.

Go Viral

A number of short videos have gone viral and become global phenomena’s, meaning huge sums of money. Of course, it is difficult to predict whether your 20 second video of your toddlers dance moves will make it viral and bring in some cash off the back of it, but it is worth trying, especially if your video promotes your business, skill or hobby.

Advertising

An increasing number of people are earning money through the advertising revenue generated by their videos as well. Video makers can earn money from advertising via the site’s partner revenue-sharing programme. This scheme is aimed at regular uploaders with big audiences. Basically, this means you share in the revenue generated when people watch. Views and clicks then bring in the money, through relevant advert placements.

These changes allowed for a generation of entrepreneurs on YouTube who have declared big earnings, although many are building this up very slowly. The process takes time and patience to build up an audience and viewers who respect and trust your content enough to visit, view and click-through to adverts.

Marketing

YouTube can also simply be used to promote what you do. Add a link to your website and showcase your work, talent or product and you can potentially have thousands of viewers learning more about you and your business. Many talented people have been spotted via YouTube. Ensure that you take advantage of such exposure, by adding links to your YouTube channel on your website, blog and social media sites. Together, they make a powerful communication package.

Recording Your YouTube Videos

The best way to record YouTube videos is using a free online hosted application called Screencast-O-Matic. This is an exceptionally simple application to use, you can upload directly to your YouTube account and have the option to store your videos on their servers.

Here’s how…

Go to www.screencast-o-matic.com and register for a free account. To begin with I would just use the free version and then when you start to make money pay $15 for the annual pro version. The free version will give you –

Max recording time of 15 minutes – this is more than enough recording time

Free hosting for 15 videos that you record

Record screen and webcam

Publish your videos to YouTube at a click of the button

The paid version will let you record HD videos and allow you to access a variety of editing tools. I have the pro version but rarely use the editing tools. Why, because the videos are 4-5 minutes in length and if I make a mistake I simply start again.

On their home page you will see the help section, just click on the button which is located at the top right. This will show you how to use the software to record videos.

Businesspeople can maximise their output by hiring cost-effective external service providers to help them turn over more work. These opportunities exist on online marketplaces such as Elance, where businesses and entrepreneurs can outsource a huge variety of contracts. There are a few tips to follow if you are hiring such help for the first time.

Where to advertise

Decide on the best place to advertise for external service providers by researching various methods and getting a feel for what is available.

Clear brief

When advertising a contract, be clear about exactly what the project involves and the deadline. This way, you will avoid time wasters and receive applications from service providers who understand the information needed and the duration they have to complete it, thus allowing them to quote realistic costs to you. Discard anybody who does not apply according to your brief.

Review

Read each application and shortlist as you would with any job vacancy. Don’t be afraid to follow-up applications by asking questions or requesting an example of their previous work. Look for as specific an experience fit as possible – you want the best person for your job. Ensure that the applicant has followed the brief provided and can provide references and/or samples of their work. It can be tempting to choose somebody based purely on price, but experience and a good proposal is key.

Agreements

There are a number of work legal templates available on the Internet and it can be wise to get a simple one drawn up to be signed/agreed. Ensure that you negotiate ownership of the work in advance and if necessary, include this in the agreement proposal. Be clear how the work will be used and who owns the copyright. When hiring through a website, there are often exchanges made via email and it is wise to save copies of all of these in case any problems occur at a later date. Always ask the person you hire to respect confidentiality and discretion.

Trial

Hire a client on a test basis at first, rather than committing to a long-term project. The best plan is to start small and evaluate success or problems along the way, before hiring for a longer period of time.

Payment

Paypal is the safest and easiest way to work payment. Make sure that you agree payment in advance and have a copy of such agreements and tie payment to clearly defined project milestones. If you are advertising a large or ongoing project, you may work with weekly invoices or if it is a shorter contract, a payment in a lump sum could be made at the end.

The key to hiring the best outsourcer is to be clear and honest about your expectations and define good work ethics from the start. Ensure that your communication is clear and polite and allow time with your deadline for any problems or questions which might arise. Outsourcing work can have major advantages over hiring full-time staff and is simple enough to do.

Despite the rise in social media sites, email is still the most popular. As such, email marketing is a key tool, not to be missed. It can be a cost-effective way of reaching your audience, build and maintain customer relations, promote new business ventures and inform people. Here are some tips for successful email marketing:

Good database management

Keeping an organised database of clients/contacts is extremely important. A database is a place to store information about your contacts, which can be used to send mass emails (or even target more specific groups of people). As well as the task of creating a database, it is crucial to keep it updated over time. When people decide to unsubscribe from your emails or emails do not deliver, delete and amend your database to ensure that you respect their wishes do not harm customer relations. Ensure customer confidentiality and ask for permission from people before you add them to your mailing list. When using classic emailing (as opposed to an email management system), add contacts to the BCC field, so that others will not see the email addresses. I have played around with many methods and tools to manage my email lists, my recommendation is to use Aweber.

Topical

Once you have your mailing list ready, do not bombard them with emails too often. Make your emails specific. The best way to do this is to target particular events. Plan your email campaign thoroughly before clicking send, which means deciding what the purpose of the email is, who to target and how to monitor the success. Send a test before the real thing.

Email design

For smaller mailing lists or small budgets, using an email package such as Outlook is fine for email marketing. However, it does not allow certain opportunities for graphics and can make monitoring success or allowing people to unsubscribe quickly, a little restrictive. If you are able to invest some money in to the campaign, get an email marketing software package. This helps with the email design and mail-out and can work on a monthly or annual subscription basis. It also allows you to check statistics about the success of your campaign and download data.

Mobile-friendly

The number of people checking their emails on their mobile phone is huge and ever-increasing. As such, it is important to adapt the email visuals and formatting to be easily readable on a mobile phone. This usually means to limit the number of images and to keep it simple.

Measure your success

It is helpful to have a way of measuring the success of your email marketing campaign, either to justify time spent on it for your boss or to define whether or not to continue in future if you own your own business. An email marketing package has a number of tools in which to see how successfully the campaign met its objectives. It can indicate how many of the emails were received and how many were opened, for example.

Emailing your message to your customers, old and new, is a quick, simple and relatively cheap way in which to communicate and market what you do. Don’t forget to remind customers to add your email address to their contacts list (to avoid them ending up in the spam queue) and always listen to feedback. Over time, you will be able to determine how often to send emails and which are the most effective.

One of the key decisions to make when starting up a blog or website is the topic or niche and this decision should never be rushed. In the first instance, choose a topic you are passionate about, experienced in (to some extent) and want to learn and write about. There are a number of ways to help you research your chosen topic or niche and make your blog or website stand out from the crowd.

Competition

Some topics and niches are extremely competitive, possibly even over-subscribed, while others have little competition. Often with competition comes interest and is a key to what people want to read. The decision on which topic to choose tends to fall with what interests you, but if you are torn between two topics, you may want to have a look at examples of similar blogs or websites and research the market. Can you offer something new in a crowded market? Do other similar sites make money? What domain names are left for you to use?

Potential Earnings

When considering and researching your niche, you should look at the opportunities for monetizing your website/blog. Researching similar sites is important here to see their scope for advertising etc.

Audience

Having a good quality blog/website with interesting content and design is one thing, but its success is limited without an engaged audience. Having followers who re-visit and help spread the word about your site on your behalf is an asset. When it comes to audience, look beyond visitor numbers and aim to find a niche that will attract a passionate audience who will really get involved and become a fan of what you offer.

Future plans

If you are looking to sustain a website for many years to come, choose a topic/niche that can grow and develop with you and ensure that there is plenty to write about. Here, you will need to find a balance between finding something that is current and popular and also has longevity.

Marketing

Part of the research process when choosing a niche or topic, is to see how others spread the word about their website/blog and how you can emulate this. There are a number of web communities, social media sites and forums available on a whole host of topics and it is worth having a look at what is available, prior to launching your site.

News

To ensure that your site ranks high on Google, it needs fresh content. There are a number of ways to be kept updated on news about your particularly topic of choice. Researching in the 21st century is a relatively quick and easy task, and does not take hours of reading through books and copying notes. Online tools can help you. Google has a number of useful tools, including Google search (one of the most obvious search engines), Google Blog Search (blog specific), Google News (up-to-date news), Google Trends (which shows you the level of interest in a topic and the hottest trends) and Google Alerts (alerts you when there is new content about your topic). Other research tools include Yahoo Buzz Index (similar to Google Trends), PR distribution websites such as PRWeb and PR Buzz and Technorati (similar to Google Blog Search).

Many people choose a blog over a traditional website, for a variety of reasons and there are increasingly more registered blogs and bloggers every single year, either as a hobby or business-related. This article explains how to get started in what can first seem a complicated market.

Reason

First of all, ask yourself why you want to start a blog. Do you have a business and would like to increase sales? Would you like to raise awareness of a cause close to your heart? Do you want to share stories about your favourite hobby with the world? Whatever the reason, be clear about your blogging objectives in the short-term and long-term and have a plan to stick to along the journey.

Topic

Write about a topic that interests you. Over time, you will need to be passionate about the subject of your blog as this will keep you returning to write, keep it updated and marketing it. If you want to gain credibility from your blog, pick a subject you are experienced in. Entertainment, health and fashion are among the most popular blog topics.

Hosting

A big decision to make with a blog is whether you want to host it yourself, or use a free blogging service that is hosted for you. The free blogging services will save you money, but will leave you with a less-than-catchy domain name and little control. A cheap method of hosting the blog yourself is to install free WordPress blog software, which allows you a great deal more freedom and flexibility. You can then find a web host for your blog – I recommend Bluehost. If you choose a hosting provider, please ensure they offer unlimited websites to host and use the Cpanel.

Domain Name

The next task is to find a domain name that has not already been taken and is memorable and relevant. This is more difficult than it seems but many people find the process of choosing a name for your blog exciting.

Design and Content

Once you have your blog ready to go, you can get to work on make it the best it can be. This will involve some tender loving care, by designing, uploading pictures and interesting, relevant copy. At first, it is likely that you will be doing all of the work yourself, but you could look in to outsourcing the workload at a later date.

Monetizing your blog

If you have chosen to make money from your blog, you will need fresh new content, regularly. The key to a good blog is the content. Once you build up a readership, you will earn respect and see the money come in. Ways to earn money from your blog is to use Google’s Adsense or write product reviews with redirect affiliate links.

Marketing

As with any product, marketing is important in raising awareness or increasing sales. Spread the word about your new blog in as many different places as possible, from word of mouth to social media.

Literally anybody can be a blogger, but having a good quality blog to be proud of, that lasts the length of time, takes effort and patience.